Corruption leads to new rules for Afghan contracts

[unhappycamper]

Corruption leads to new rules for Afghan contracts
By Dianna Cahn
Stars and Stripes
Published: June 26, 2010

KABUL — During her years as chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gloria Martinez steered $155 million in contracts to the construction company her sister worked for. The company collected millions even when it failed to do the work.

Martinez, her sister Dinorah Cobos and Cobos’ boss, Raymond Azar, president of the Lebanon-based construction firm Sima Salazar, carried out one of the largest contracting schemes ever perpetrated against the corps. Their capture, after a sting in Kabul in which the corps took part, illustrated the potential for fraud in handling the billions of dollars in aid to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The corps has recently instituted a series of policies to thwart contractor abuses, particularly selling off awarded contracts and failing to pay laborers.

The corps alone has more than $3 billion in projects in Afghanistan. Over the past eight years, hundreds of billions of dollars in donor aid has passed through Kabul.

This unnatural flow of cash into one of the world’s poorest countries, combined with the coalition’s “Afghan first” program to give work to local companies and individuals, has fed into the endemic corruption plaguing Afghan governance and life. It also has given rise to resentment by the very people the donor community is supposed to be helping.

[SpiralHawk]

1. "All your shrink-wrapped billions are belong to us." - Republicon Cronies (R)

[SpiralHawk]

2. "contracting schemes AGAINST the troops"

from the OP.

Sheesh. Who set the accounting systems up? As if we didn't know.